CLEVELAND, Tenn. – Cleveland officials may try to use nuisance laws to close a 33-unit Northcrest Circle apartment complex at the center of many police calls and complaints from neighbors in recent years.
The city is monitoring what happens with a similar case in East Ridge, said John Kimball, Cleveland’s attorney. The Cleveland Police Department is compiling a list of its calls to the apartments and, if the number is great enough and the nature of them serious enough, Cleveland may follow East Ridge’s example, Kimball said.
In August, East Ridge filed a court petition seeking to declare Superior Creek Lodge a public nuisance, based in part on the high number of calls to police from the business. East Ridge’s petition in Hamilton County Criminal Court says police responded to 2,654 calls to the lodge between April 1, 2006 and June 30, 2010.
The Superior Creek case is still ongoing, and there’s a court date set for Nov. 15 at 8:30 a.m. before Criminal Court Judge Rebecca Stern.
Kimball said he has read East Ridge’s petition but not all of its supporting documents.
HISTORY OF PROBLEMS
Mike Hodnett, who owns rental property in many areas around Cleveland, owns one of the Northcrest rental units and all of an adjacent apartment complex. The problem, and the solution, begin with the city itself, he said.
The city and Bradley County have collected taxes from the units, Hodnett said, but the city has not paved Northcrest Circle in 30 years. Northcrest Circle, a city street, loops from Pryor Road around the apartments and back to Pryor Road.
“The city needs to do its job first,” which includes paving to restore pride in the complex and installing bins to relieve trash problems, Hodnett said.
When that many people have no place to put their trash but by the street, there is a problem, Hodnett said.
“I agree there are some problems in there, and they need to be addressed,” Hodnett said.
But the surrounding neighbors have had no problems with his tenants, he said.
Other owners of apartments in the complex could not be reached for comment.
Jennie Goins, a Pryor Road resident who lives across from Northcrest Circle, said she and her neighbors are fearful. She said she has seen street fights, and she suspects drugs are being sold from some apartments. Goins also said traffic to and from the apartments has increased and that sometimes a vehicle parks only briefly while someone comes out of an apartment, leans into the vehicle and then goes back inside.
Records show the city has received complaints since at least 2007 about garbage, graffiti, loud noise and traffic around the complex.
“We just want our neighborhood to be like it was,” neighbor Brenda Andrada said. She filed a stalking case against one apartment resident who since has moved, she said.
Andrada said her home, Goins’ home and others have been egged. A nearby house, she said, has been burglarized four times in four years.
Goins has turned in petitions from home owners to the city asking for more traffic control and brighter street lights. She said Wednesday that there was a heavy police presence there over the past weekend.
The complex was built in 1979 as townhouses. Each unit was to be lived in by an owner who followed a set of restrictive conditions. But, over the years, the complex changed to mostly rental property.
“The problem is all the units are owned by two or three people, and they are not the complainants. The complainants are the surrounding neighbors, and they are not going to have standing to enforce those private restrictions; at least in my opinion,” Kimball said.
He said the city cannot file a lawsuit to enforce private restrictions, only the people who live there can do that.
Kimball said nuisance laws rarely are used against dwelling places. They routinely are used to seek closing of bars and clubs that create neighborhood disturbances, he said.
CALL HISTORY
Police are compiling a history of calls for officers, Chief Wes Snyder said. That list will be ready for City Council members in time for a late October council meeting, he said.
“But there’s no magic number,” Kimball said.
City Councilman George Poe said people who live out there “are calling me, because they are afraid to call the police. When they were calling the police they were vandalized, or somebody [tore] up their flowers or there was graffiti.”
Not everyone who lives in the rental units is creating a problem, officials said. And not every bad act is necessarily a public nuisance under the law.